#chapter response

This might go toward explaining some of Pudding’s behavior. Also, I skim over the idea of monsters and there be SPOILERS below!

If you haven't noticed, I've missed the last two One Piece chapter responses. I have been preoccupied with other things -- revising, preparing for a trip, scouting for a potential move, and a revived interest in old fandoms -- and reading One Piece, and responding to it, have been on the lower end of priorities. 

 That said, I'm going off on a two week trip tomorrow and have filled up my queue in lieu of that.

What I wrote:

Ace’s Personality Traits: delimited in Alabasta

The Germa Failure - OP chapter 852 response

Not Here! - OP chapter 853 response

Agrabah Worldbuilding

“the loveliest cornflower”

What I drew:

Adrianna Baker

11/18/16

I Am Woman Response: Chapter 13

Professor Pepper

Throughout this recent chapter Valenti brings up the effects of different “isms.” There are so many of them but we have so little time to focus on them all. Instead I am going to be taking apart classism. Classism is prejudice against or in favor of people belonging of a certain social class. This form of “ism” has been faced by many including myself, but it does not always have to do with how rich or poor you are as I found out.

In this chapter Valenti mentions classism and how she faced it growing up. By using an example from her high school years attending a public school in New York that tested students for entry she stated that it was a kind of “dorky math and science school.” Anyway Valenti says that most of her friends for girls with nice apartments and college-educated parents, while she grew up in Long Island City with parents who never attended school. This was never a problem for Valenti though because her friends were her friends until one day after they came one stated. “Your mom is so cute! Her accent sounds so...uneducated(Valenti, 238)!” The simple fact is that the girl may have not meant to be cruel, or even know what she was saying but she was playing up to the role of classism. Children face this every single day when they attend school or college. There is always someone who thinks they are better than you and they love to rub the fact in that they are. Although I faced this in my own lifetime I have not faced it the same way as Valenti has. I’ve always worked harder to prove myself worth something, I’m considered middle class and yes some fellow students from my school gave off the “better than you” vibes but it never really affected me. The one thing that affected me the most was the classism due to my own health. After being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in the ninth grade I felt the air towards me shift. There of course were times that this was fine, because people were worried about me and what I ate but other times it bothered me. The simple act of someone giving me a sideway glance like I was some “freak” for having to shoot myself up with insulin. Or when someone would ask me if I could do that, or they were surprised when they heard that I ran because god forbid I’m a diabetic I should not be able to do things like that. That is what bothered me, the fact that all of a sudden I was in all senses an outcast in a town that once made me feel so loved. Although I’m not saying I do not feel loved because now I realize that my school was not used to “people” like me and I’m starting to understand that just because I’m a diabetic it does not mean I am any different it just means I work just a little extra hard.

According to an article by Rev. Dan Schatz on the Huffington Post during one of President-Elect Donald Trump's caucuses he was quoted as saying, “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated(Schatz, 2016).” Just take a minute and think about that. Now I will state that I am keeping an open mind with Trump but the fact that he stated something like this bothers me. “I love the poorly educated,” really, how does that seem like the proper thing to say. The fact that he states this just shows that he loves the people that do not know what he will do to our country because they are not educated or wealthy. In the end that is what he wants or so I see it. In all accounts Trump wants us to not go to college, he wants us to stay uneducated so he can easily control us. Now although Schatz mentions this he also brings up a great point about how we can change this. The fact that education goes hand-in-hand with wealth is one of the many reasons why so many do not have the education they wish. Schatz states, “In policy terms, love in action means giving all working people a living wage, so that the kinds of jobs typically taken by people with less schooling don’t result in a lifetime of poverty. It means funding public schools fairly, so that less affluent communities aren’t victimized by generations of educational neglect. Love means increasing access to college, but it also means honoring the needs and accomplishments of those who follow other paths. On a personal level, love means treating all people with equal regard, whatever our education and theirs. It means finding the courage to connect as equals across educational lines, gaining wisdom and insight from all kinds of life experiences. Love means letting go of the assumptions and stereotypes our culture too often promotes, along with all remnants of condescension and judgment. Love means being able to value education without undervaluing any group of people. At its most basic, love means eye contact(Schatz, 2016).” Just let that sink in. Think about it for a second. All of our basic problems revolve around love and classism. The fact that wealth and standing means education needs to stop. We are teaching our children that if you come from a rich or well off background you are better, where on the other hand if you are poor or less well off than you are just a simple uneducated “common person.”

This problem needs to be talked about more often. Do we want to make our country great again? If we keep going down the road of keeping “common people” uneducated we are only going to make it great again for the rich and well off. That is not a country I want my children and grandchildren living in.

Works Cited:

Schatz, D. (2016) Loving the ‘poorly educated’. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-dan-schatz/loving-the-poorly-educate_b_9313462.html (Accessed: 19 November 2016).

Adrianna Baker

I Am Woman Response: Chapter 12

11/14/16

Professor Pepper

Throughout the growth of our history women have been finally been a part of how our government. They are sadly only a small part of the government considering that men have run our government since it was first put in place.

According to Valenti in chapter twelve the numbers do not lie because despite the gains that have been made through the years women only make up 15% of Congress, 14% of Senate, and 15% in the House of Representatives(Valenti, 221). If that does not give you at least some concern as to why women are not being represented enough then I really do not know how to help you. The simple fact that women are not being represented the way that we need to be bothers me. We are in a sense being told that we are to feminine so that is why we can not be apart of politics. Than people wonder why younger women do not go out and get involved with politics. We are being told over and over daily that we are “to feminine” or we are being a “bitch,” and my favorite is that “we are too young to understand what is going on.” These are not only things I have heard in my lifetime but Valenti brings them up in her book as well. The fact that women do not make up as much as they should in our government is sad. I mean look at the countries around us. Countries like Austria, Germany, Mozambique, Sweden and many others have party quotas that are voluntary basically saying that a certain percentage of women will be selected as election candidates. Other countries like Argentina, Costa Rica, France and many others use legal quotas which make it mandatory for political parties to set a certain percentage of parliamentary seats for women(Valenti, 231) In the end we need to focus on increasing the amount of women in our government.

In an article from 2015 Steven Hall talks about why the United States does not have many women in politics. When I first opened this article the thing that caught my attention the most is the quote in the beginning. “At the current rate of progress, it will take nearly 500 years for women to reach fair representation in government(Hill, 2015).” Stop and think about that for a second. It will take five hundred years for women to start receiving the amount of representation. Does that not bother you, even a little bit? That means in our lifetime we will not have the representation that we need to make progress in our government. I mean come on countries around us like Sweden are prospering because of their representation of women in government.  

This is what we need to start focusing on. Without women knowing where they stand in politics we are dead in the water. There needs to be not only more representation in government, there needs to be more women voters out there. Politics affect us more than we would like to admit so we need to fight for the rights that we already have and get the rights that we do not have.

Works Cited:

Hill, S. (2015) Why does the US still have so few women in office? Available at: https://www.thenation.com/article/why-does-us-still-have-so-few-women-office/ (Accessed: 18 November 2016).

Adrianna Baker

11/2/16

I Am Woman Response: Chapter 11

Professor Pepper

A beauty cult through the eyes of a woman is something that she must join. This is the only way to be a woman, you have to be apart of the cult that makes you believe that you can always do something to change yourself for the better. Sometimes these things are not always for the better.

The society within which we grow up in today forces us to believe that we can always be better looking. The shows, the magazines, the music, the clothes, the makeup it goes on and on. The amount of the things that the media and society throws at us to change is rather ridiculous. Our society is killing what beauty is truly at heart. Beauty is meant to make you feel good about yourself not make you want to change everything. There is no need for teen girls to be getting plastic surgery. According to Our Body Selves in 2015 alone around there has been 226,000 cosmetic surgeries on young girls between the ages of 13-19. Out of these surgeries alone there has been at least 65,000 surgical procedures  such as nose reshaping, breast lifts, breast augmentation, liposuction, and tummy tucks(Ourselves, 2016). This is unacceptable but it is happening all over the place. I find it completely unfathomable that young women can hate or dislike their body so much that they decide the only way to fix it is through surgery. There are the exceptions to this of course, considering if you are getting surgery due to a horrible accident or a birth defect but people getting surgeries, especially young girls, because they feel they are ugly is completely wrong.

Valenti mentions in chapter eleven her own experience with the “appearance as a shut-the-fuck-up tool” as a way for people to shut down woman. In 2006 Valenti was invited to meet former President Clinton with a bunch of other bloggers. It is a natural reaction to be really excited for this so when she found out she is quoted as being pretty, “revved up and feeling pretty honored.” Even though she is a feminist Valenti was known fashionista at least a little bit so she naturally wanted to dress nicely so she went for a simple cap-sleeve crew neck sweater and black pants(Valenti, 207). This being mentioned I’d like to ask a simple question. How would you feel if you dressed perfectly fine and then the next thing you know you're being told you were dressing basically “sluty”? That is what this whole “appearance as a shut-the-fuck-up tool” is trying to do. The use of this statement has the ability to break down a woman in a matter of seconds. Valenti learned this first hand when a particular site by the name of Althouse ran by a law professor by the name of Ann Althouse decided it was necessary for her to post something on her site about how Valenti dressed during the meeting. When Valenti dared speak up about the post Althouse said as quoted as telling Valenti she was “posing” and she should have expected the nasty comments. All of this cumulated to Althouse starting a “boobgate.” I’ll just summarize up what “boobgate” is, basically Althouse started a whole thing about how Valenti was wearing the sweater to put more attention on her breasts so in came the hundreds of comments on some calling out the law professor on her bullshit, some calling Valenti a whore and hypocrite, more than one hundred thousand views of the notorious photo on her Flickr photo(Valenti, 208). If you ask me using someone's clothing choice against them is completely wrong but it happens on a daily. Our society has taught us that everything that deals with beauty is everything, it is so damn important that we need women to believe that they are not good enough they way they are born.

In a recent documentary that I watched I found that the media has affected how we see beauty. All of the things that we see on the media has affected how we look at beauty now. There are shows out there that are largely a reason for this. Shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and Dance Moms portray to our society that the younger you are the easier it is to press upon them that beauty is the most important thing that is going to make you happy(Greenfield, no date). These shows are pressing upon our younger generation that we all have to look beautiful and that in all sense in purposes “beauty hurts.” Although this is a very large part of the documentary it also mentions that some women and men for that fact go get surgery to make them look better because they do not have a choice but to. Cathy McGuire a bus driver and mom is one of these examples of how not all beauty changes are for the wrong reasons after becoming pregnant and having kids her body was no longer the same. She is quoted as saying, “I took a raw look at myself. What really mattered in life? I was no longer married, I didn’t own a home. I could let that go. But one of my goals was to be in the best body I could(Greenfield, no date).” This shows us that a woman can decide if she wants to change her body. Although this is the good side to beauty changes there are just too many things pointing to the “genocide” of beauty. Woman see on a daily, skinny models who do not reprsent who they are. They see young girls getting plastic surgery to help “build their confidence.”

There is one thing that I want to end this on. Do you feel pretty? Do you feel beautiful? If you do that is perfect because you are. If you do not I hope to let you know that you are, do not listen to what the media says. There is one thing I know for sure every woman is beautiful no matter what.

Citations:

Greenfield, L. (no date) Beauty CULTure. Available at: https://vimeo.com/152227272 (Accessed: 4 November 2016).

Valenti, J. (2014) Full frontal feminism: A young woman’s guide to why feminism matters. Boston, MA, United States: Avalon Publishing Group.

Adrianna Baker

10/24/16

I Am Woman Response: Chapter 10

Professor Pepper

Throughout our time on this earth we have been taught that men need to act like men. As Valenti puts it, “the worse thing you can be called is a girl,” the fact that this is the worse thing a person can be called bothers me beyond belief.

Think about this. Men are affected by sexism as well, but it is not talked about as much especially by men themselves.(Valenti, 190) That is right men are affected by the same sexism that we are facing as well. The same amount of sexism we face on how we act is the same amount of sexism they are facing. The fact that we face people telling us, “that is not how a lady acts,” or “you're a lady act like one,” is the same thing men are facing. The thing is that feminism can help men as much as it help women. In a world where the only way to be “a man” only comes with the potential to damage both men and women there are some upsides to this.(Valenti, 190) There are some amazing people doing some great things to try and put an end to the sexism men are facing. Academic and masculinity expert Michael Kimmel and organizations like Men Can Stop Rape are just two examples of this attempt to help show how sexism hurts men.(Valenti, 190) The fact is that if we do not evaluate how sexism affects men we will never be able to understand how sexism affects women. In the end these two are connected more than most people will like to admit.

Now that I have brought up how sexism is not only affecting women but men as well I will mention one of the most disturbing facts about this. Men do not cry. I am sure you have heard that statement a lot. Or even better. Act like a man. Or that's not how a man acts. My favorite one man up. Valenti brings up a perfect example of this “man up,” effect. This example portrays a commercial for Milwaukee’s Best beer shows a group of men digging a ditch when a bee comes too close to one of the men he lets out a high pitched scream. The men look at him in horror when a large can of Milwaukee’s Best beer falls out of the sky and crushes the offending man.(Valenti, 191. 192) The fact that this basically restates that the worst thing you can call anybody is a girl bothers me. I do not know about you but a man is a human as well and they need to be able to express themselves. In the society that we grow up in we are trained to have men strong, hard, and unemotional. I think what bothers me the most is that we have become so entranced in the fact that men are supposed to be unemotional that we even question our own president. When in January 2016, President Obama showed a pubic display of emotion when he shed a tear over gun violence in America. The fact that questions like, “whether it was appropriate for a country's leader to show emotion,” and views that portrayed him as having a, “lack of ego, confidence, strength, self-awareness,” is what bothers me the most.(Young, 2016) All of this has nothing to do with a man showing emotion, this has to do with the fact that the society we live in sees emotion as a female matter. Men are supposed to be strong, not weak. My problem here is one thing. Emotion is a great thing to show, it shows that you have feelings which we all have. For example, my father is a very emotional man he can cry at a drop of a hat if something truly bothers him; oh and he loves the color purple. Gasp, holy crap he is not man. That must be the reason. The fact is that he is and he is one of the strongest men I know, emotions are strong they are what make us human.

I want to end this essay with one thing. I want you to think about our future. Think about the future generations of men and women. How do you want them to see emotion? Should sexism affect them in this way anymore? There is something very simple to understand. Our society is forming male robots with no emotions. We should not be afraid of more Trumps roaming the land, we should be fearing the future human robots we are creating every single day.

Citations:

Young, S.L. (2016) Why Shouldn’t men cry? Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/s-l-young/why-shouldnt-men-cry_b_9358854.html (Accessed: 25 October 2016).

Adrianna Baker

10/23/16

I Am Woman Response: Chapter 9

Professor Pepper

The start of feminism in 1848 Seneca Falls, New York was the start of a long fight for  women that is still going on to this day. There are at least three waves that we know of to this day, and at the moment maybe even the start of a fourth wave. These waves are important to our movement as a whole without them there would be no feminism.

As I mentioned in the opening statement paragraph there are at least three waves of feminism that we know of. The first wave which involved people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. The second wave which involved people like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. The third wave which involved people like Kathleen Hanna and Jill Filipovic. These waves are so important to feminism as a whole I know that I said this before but without waves like the first wave there would be no feminism at all. The following waves have increased the support in what we stand for as a whole the equality between men and women. Although many say that feminism is already dead. That we already accomplished what we set out to do that is far from the truth. There are still many things in this world that need to be handled to help set equality set between men and women.  

In waves like the second wave feminism became more well known to the public. By this time feminism was only associated with women earning the right to vote. That is it they only see feminism as women earning the right to vote and nothing else. There is so much more to it as a whole though that is what women do not understand. This wave as Ventali puts it is known for, “Gloria Steinem and burning bras,” this is somewhat true.(Ventali, 176) Well Steinem was true the bra burning was not though. Although this is one of the reasons why I brought up the second wave of feminism I really brought it up to mention the formation of the National Organization for Women or NOW. This group was formed in 1966 and Betty Friedan was one of the main founders of the group. The organization's original statement was, “The time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a full equal partnership of the sexes.”(Ventali, 176) The thing about NOW as an organization is that now in the third wave it is consisted of mostly middle age white women who believe we as younger women do not have the status they have to talk about at conferences or in public.

As of in the following paragraph I mentioned the fact that the organization by the name of NOW is a organization mostly consisted of older women therefore making it seem unappealing for younger women to join the cause of feminism. Velanti brings it to our attention about a young woman who she knew that attended a NOW convention, the troubles she faced while at the conference. This is in her own words, “There was concern from NOW that I wasn’t a serious enough speaker, partly because of my age and partly because my job title wasn’t on par with the credential speakers I was scheduled to sit with.”(Ventali, 184) The fact that young women are being basically pushed out onto the streets because of their age and job titles kind of makes me angry. I mean come on we have a right to speak our minds, we as a generation have a lot to say about these issues that we face. According to officer, Erin Matson, of NOW in an article posted in 2010 by Newsweek titled, ’Remember Roe! How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don’t think abortion rights need defending?.’ This article was quoted as talking about abortion rights and women. All of this without talking to a single young women.(Organization and Women, 2010) If this does not bother you then I do not know what will. The fact that us a young women do not have a say in issues that bother us as a whole is what scares me.

There is a certain quote I would like to end this essay by. Valenti says in her book. “ The real power of feminism isn’t in our numbers or our public image; it’s in the quality and diversity of the women involved.”

Citations:

Organization, N. and Women (2010) Let Young Women speak for ourselves. Available at: http://now.org/blog/hey-media-include-young-women-in-your-stories-about-feminism/ (Accessed: 24 October 2016).